"
Thereupon the worthy couple seated themselves in Cimmerian darkness,
and vowed their intention of awaiting old man Bobo.
"He'll soon be along," they remarked. "He must be awful lonesome."
But the old gentleman kept them out of Hades for full five years.
He lived alone with his grand-daughter and a stable helper in the
tumble-down adobe just to the left of the San Lorenzo race track. The
girl cooked, baked, and washed for him. Twice a week she peddled fruit
and garden stuff in San Lorenzo. Of these sales her grandsire exacted
the most rigorous accounting, and occasionally, in recognition of her
services, would fling her a nickel. The old man himself rarely left
home, and might be seen at all hours hobbling around his garden and
corrals, keenly interested in his own belongings, halter-breaking his
colts, anxiously watching the growth of his lettuce, counting the
oranges, and beguiling the fruitful hours with delightful calculation.
"It's all profit," he has often said to me. "We buy nothin' an' we
sell every durned thing we raise."
Then he would chuckle and rub together his yellow, wrinkled hands.
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